Plagiarism and the discussion board

I discovered a student who copied text directly from Wikipedia and submitted it as his entry for a chapter commentary discussion topic. The student submitted an attached file instead of putting text in the Message box. I downloaded the file to read it and opened it using Mac's preview function to read the text. Some of the words were underlined in blue and I hovered my mouse over them and found they were links to wikipedia.org and about.com.

I did not have a specific note regarding plagiarism on the discussion board (I have it for the written assignments) but my instructions for the chapter commentaries mention providing evidence from the text and citing page numbers for direct quotes. I will need to start including that in the future.

It is too bad that our system's integration with Turnitin.com does not include the discussion board.

I am glad I discovered this after my last class before spring break, as I now have more than a week to recover from my disappointment.

The Economist in class

Each week bring in an article (especially a leader) and read out loud to class to show the connection between the past and present, especially if an issue seems new today but confronted America in the past. What is the source of the quote attributed to Mark Twain: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme"?

Rubrics and writing grading

Use the rubric to calculate the grade for a writing assignment. Each criterion is worth some percentage of the grade and then each can be graded separately. Also connect it to the SLO.

Multiple mind maps

Mind maps can have a couple of uses in class. Doing one on the first day on all of the things going on in students' lives will help me get to know them better. I would do this by leading by example on the whiteboard in the classroom and have students do their own mind maps on paper.

Another day-one mind map could be on the class topic. What do my students know about what we are going to learn in the class? After doing the personal mind map they could draw one based on the most important events, people, and changes that occurred during the period covered by the class. This could then be repeated at the end of the class to see how their perspectives changed.

And mind maps can work for individual topics or lectures, even assignments.

Grading discussion extra credit

When someone replies to a student's post there should be only one point per reply per author regardless of the quality; otherwise the initial student might find out the score awarded to the other student ("courtesy point for 'I agree' posts").

Replies to the original need a scale:

• 6 points for quality paragraph with quotes and page numbers
• 4 points for quality paragraph without citations
• 2 points for "I like that you mentioned x"
• 1 point for "I like your attention to detail"

Searching Google for images

I found an unofficial Google blog entry with information on how to search images that are available for sharing under a Creative Commons license. It includes information on public domain images.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/06/find-creative-commons-images-in-google.html

Attendance without excuses

Or try awarding 10 points per day of attendance for the weekly writing assignment and 5 (6? 7?) points for the discussion makeup for those who miss. Extra credit to all for their responses above this requirement.

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For students who miss class regardless of the reason, give them an assignment on the discussion board to make up for that lost time. For example, write a two-paragraph commentary on the topic covered in class that day. The commentary would be due within a week of the missed class date, and it would have to meet the standards for a quality discussion post to count.

This requires strict enforcement of attendance policy. Points could be awarded for attendance to provide a value for each day. How would that fit into the competencies of the class?

Any student could reply to one of these messages with a comment to earn extra credit.

Competency-based grades

Does a passing grade (C) in a class mean achieving all of the course's competencies or student learning outcomes? If so, the grades above C become reflections of how well a student did in exceeding the basic achievement of those competencies. The instructor demonstrates the relative weight of each competency by assigning the class grades accordingly. Or the instructor could let the course grade come from the assignments, as usual, and not worry about whether a passing grade represents achieving all competencies.

Once a student has demonstrated a competency, that student could choose not to complete any additional assignments associated with that competency and accept a C grade on each. This requires each assignment to be tied to a single competency.